Winter’s Bone: Evil in the Ozarks

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... Arizona immigration protests Socialist Action august 2010 11 W Rosselini have created a moody, intense film riter/Director Debra Granik and co-writer Anne from the eponymous novel, “Winter’s Bone,” by Daniel Woodrell. A 17-year-old girl, Ree Dolly (a superb Jennifer Lawrence), has dropped out of school to take on the job of raising her younger siblings: a wise 12-yearold boy, Sonny (Isaiah Stone) and Ashlee, a sweet, seven-year-old (Ashlee Thompson).

Their mother, Connie (Valerie Richards), is non compos mentis, the result of her husband’s drug dealings.

He has gone missing for over a week. Early in the film we learn that if Ree’s father fails to show for a court date, they could lose their property, which he had put up for bond.

The family lives in the Missouri out-back in a faux log cabin home little bigger than a double-wide trailer, in a community of meth-cooking druggies, where the law is suspect. This is Ozark country, an area of few jobs because of the decline of traditional industries such as mining, sawmills, and ranching. It’s an area ruled by tough men backed up by their seemingly submissive (don’t be fooled) women. The only option for young people is either to sell the drugs cooked up by their elders or join the Army.

Desperate, Ree tries to enlist for the $40,000 sign-up bonus so they can keep the house, but the Army recruiter (a measured, sincere Russell Schalk) convinces her that her job is to take care of her siblings.

It’s early winter, the trees are bare, everything is brown and gray. It looks cold, really cold. What warmth there is is in the loving relationship between Ree, her mute mom, and her siblings; Ree takes them to school and rustles up their meager meals.

But money is evident: there are some nice ranches, well-fed livestock, a harvest ready for market, and nifty four-wheel drives and pick-ups—money made off the men in Ree’s extended family who appear to do nothing but sit around and do drugs, an activity to which Ree is totally averse.

Ree sets out to find her father but hits formidable roadblocks at every turn. Friends and relatives give her no information, not even her dad’s brother, Teardrop (continued from page 12: “Protests mount against Arizona immigration law”) their own countries and come to the U.S. looking for work.” (An estimated 6 million maize-growers in Mexico were driven from their family farms and ejidos, or cooperatives, because NAFTA allowed giant U.S. agribusiness corporations, subsidized by the U.S. government, to flood the Mexican market with low-price corn, and local growers were unable to compete.)”

“The road to a real and positive change in immigration policy will be a long one,” said Isabel Garcia in conclusion. “We must continue our struggle!”

The next morning, on July 29, Isabel Garcia was interviewed on the independent radio and TV news hour “Democracy Now,” hosted by Amy Goodman and Juan Gonzalez. Goodman brought up the July 28 New York Times news story on the increased number of deaths of migrants trying to cross through the Arizona desert. Just in the past month of July, 58 human remains of migrants were discovered in the inhospitable, sparsely populated scrub-brush mountains and flatlands of the Arizona-Sonora high desert region.

An estimated 5000 such deaths have occurred since 1994, when NAFTA was implemented and the current militarization of the U.S.-Mexico border began. Amy Goodman and Juan Gonzalez both observed that the number of known migrant deaths in July is roughly the equivalent of the number of Western occupation troops killed in Afghanistan that month.

In her “Democracy Now” interview, Isabel Garcia also placed the right emphasis on the importance and effectiveness of mass mobilization of people in the streets.

“I think that the Obama administration, the courts, and everybody are political beings. They know what’s going on. They know that there’s massive political pressure, economic pressure, including massive historic mobilizations that have occurred in the state of Arizona. National, international people have come in. So I think most definitely there has been an impact on everybody involved, as we all know that massive, you know, real major social change results after there is mass mobilization in the streets and massive engagement by the population, and that really guides politicians, guides other entities within our system to do the right thing. And so, yes, I believe that the protests have had a definite impact on everything that we are seeing….”

During the late afternoon of July 29 (when this writer was no longer present) some of the demonstrators in front of the State Building, who still numbered around 500, occupied the intersection, through which a major artery passes in downtown Tucson. The police allowed the blocking of the intersection to go on for about an hour as rush hour traffic began around 5 pm, but then the protesters’ presence in the intersection was declared an “illegal assembly” and most were forced back onto the sidewalk, pushed by bicycle police. In the process it was reported that 13 protesters were arrested.

Participants in the Ya Basta campaign will be meeting the first week of August to discuss next steps.

In Phoenix on July 29 the turnout was only about 1000, by the estimate of a trade-union friend who traveled with a caravan of 13 buses from Los Angeles. The AFL-CIO County Federation in LA organized these buses, bringing more than (a standout, nuanced performance by John Hawkes). She is violently turned away, doors slammed in her face. The one person who it is hinted knows all is a feared elderly patriarch, Thumb Milton (Ronnie Hall), who dresses like a biker without a bike. Ree is warned of the consequences by Merab (a perfectly cast Dale Dickey) if she confronts him.

But what will happen to them if they lose the house? You sense a conspiracy of silence and an undercurrent of absolute evil. In one scene, a determined Ree suffers greatly at the hands of Merab and her tough, hardbitten female accomplices.

Parts of the film are harrowing and nightmarish, as (Above) Los Angeles AFL-CIO members march in Phoenix, July 29.

500 people to Phoenix—an eight-hour drive due east.

The relatively low numbers in Phoenix contrasted sharply with the 100,000 or more who came out on May 29, two months earlier. The July 29 demonstration came on a weekday—which would generally limit participation—whereas the earlier one was on a Saturday.

Another cause of the lower turn out on July 29 might have been the mistaken but understandable feeling that the court injunction had removed the urgency of the problem.

And another factor might have been that the actions in Phoenix mainly centered on civil disobedience, something that only the most committed would want to be involved in. It’s likely that in most cases, the thousands of families who came out on May 29 for a massive, legal, peaceful demonstration could not afford to risk being arrested on July 29.

Accounts of the Phoenix actions, where more than 80 arrests occurred, may be found on the July 30 edition of “Democracy Now” on the internet at <democraRalph Fresno / AP in the scene where Ree, with Merab, searches out her father in a swamp.

In all, “Winter’s Bone” is completely fulfilling, engaging the audience on every level with entirely believable characters without a note of falsity, pandering, or exploitation. One unforgettable scene is of a group of musicians, playing and singing traditional mountain folk tunes in someone’s living room; an old, whitehaired, comfortably plump woman (Marideth Sisco) sings in a clear, rich voice.

There’s a non-intrusive score of original music by Dickon Hinchcliff. The film was shot by cinematographer Michael McDonough around Branson, Mo. n cynow.org> and on the website <altoarizona.com>.

SB 1070 protests took place all around the U.S. and internationally (see the accompanying article by Lisa Luinenburg.) Of particular interest was the demonstration in New York City on July 29, where hundreds marched across the Brooklyn Bridge in solidarity with the resistance in Arizona. Among the organizers of that demonstration was Monami Maulik, the leader of a South Asian immigrant group called Desis Rising Up and Moving (DRUM). On the previous weekend Monami had chaired the immigration workshop at the United National Antiwar Conference in Albany, N.Y.

She was quoted as follows on “Democracy Now” on July 29: “Whatever happens in Arizona, those same anti-immigrant policies find their way up all throughout the United States. For the last 10 years, Arizona has been a testing ground for the harshest anti-immigrant policies. And so, for example, the governor of New York State has already signed on to the Secure Communities program in New York, which has not yet gone into effect, but will, and when it does, it will funnel thousands more into deportation. “Just across the river [in New Jersey], the governor has signed on to the 287(g) program, authorizing police officers to arrest people based on immigration status. So, we feel that Arizona, maybe that law is not happening here, but there are many other harsh anti-immigrant deportation provisions that our communities are feeling right here in New York City and nearby areas.”

Participants in the immigration workshop at the Albany conference agreed that they should take part in the Oct. 2 March on Washington called by the NAACP, AFL-CIO, and the New York Hospital Workers SEIU Local 1199. But while participating they would raise the demand for a real debate on immigration, looking at the root causes and changing foreign policies like NAFTA that force people to migrate. And they would reject the enforcementonly policies advocated by the Obama administration and figures like Sen. Schumer of New York, which focus on “national security” and militarization. n

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Julius Arscott / Socialist Action